if only
by irite
Summary: Tony is imprisoned in a cave with another man, and he gradually begins to trust him. But when it comes time for them to make the final plans for their escape, Tony realizes he's made a big mistake and adapts his plans accordingly. What Tony doesn't know is that Yinsen's plans have never dovetailed with his, and he finds that out in the worst way possible.


**My beta, dysprositos, is the absolute best. She's been encouraging me on this one since I first got the idea, and believe me, I needed a lot of help.**

**WARNING: mention of canonical torture attempt and violence. Also, alcoholism.**

* * *

When the first edges of a plan began to coalesce in his mind, Tony still didn't know much about this other man being kept in the same cave as he was, apparently a prisoner (but who knew for sure?).

He claimed they had met before, at a conference in Switzerland, and while Tony vaguely remembered attending that conference, he had little memory of what he did there.

So this man could have been lying, and Tony wouldn't have known enough to tell.

When he couldn't sleep at night for the cravings, though, a gut-deep _ache_, he pushed himself to remember, and the faintest scraps of memory crept in around the complete black hole that was most of his life since MIT. Hell, since before MIT. Since he'd first broken into Howard's liquor cabinet, really.

Those fragments weren't enough to fill in the gaps, and he turned his mind to the immediate problem of the car battery hooked to his chest, instead. And escape, which was never far from his mind.

He valiantly attempted to sleep every evening, knowing that his body needed it. But sleep rarely came to him, so desperate was his body for the alcohol he'd been feeding it most of his life, and so he worked on the designs on the onionskin paper, using his body to conceal the drawings from the cameras.

It was a one-man prototype, and it was for Tony.

But there was no way in hell that he could even begin to work on it without the other man noticing, so one day in an attempt to stave off the inevitable headache and pounding behind his eyes that kicked in every damn day, he slammed the layers of his design on the table, still careful to angle it so that the cameras could not see what it was that he had drawn.

Maybe he'd consumed too much of the sludge that passed for coffee in that hellhole, but he sure felt better getting that off his chest. The other man hadn't even really tried to stop him from making the suit instead of the Jericho, but after his needling, Tony was pretty sure that this was what his companion wanted him to be doing. If he'd wanted Tony to give into the pressure, then he sure had a funny way of showing it.

He pulled the palladium from the missiles and forged the circular ring he would need. He had to have help to do that, as his hands were shaking so badly with the powerful _need_ (that was a good day, even—a bad day would mean the tremors spread throughout his whole body)_. _He at least found out the man's name in the process—Yinsen—though he hated asking for his assistance. When the ring was ready, Tony soldered together a base for it, and then gritted his teeth and attempted the swap.

The angle was all wrong; he couldn't make it work.

Swearing under his breath, Tony turned to Yinsen, who was completing some other menial task on the other side of the cave (Tony had sent him away so he could have a semblance of privacy) and asked for his assistance.

Mildly (that was the most fitting adjective Tony could think of to describe him), Yinsen stopped what he was doing and came over, deftly making the switch.

Tony stood up and waved his arms, bouncing carefully, trying not to jar his head.

That done, he turned his mind to other things.

Such as the suit. _His_ suit.

He slaved over that thing, all the while desperately trying to keep up the farce of actually making the Jericho missile. As if he _would_. They could waterboard him all damn day, and he'd never give these absolute bastards so much as a _scrap_ of a design.

Tony was a Stark. Starks didn't do that shit. Howard wouldn't have, and that meant Tony _couldn't_.

That meant he needed to get the hell out of there, which left him with one option: trusting Yinsen. He couldn't escape on his own, and as long as he stuck close to Yinsen, it should be safe. He hadn't left the cave where they were being held since Tony had first regained consciousness, so Tony very seriously doubted that Yinsen was a plant. The cave conditions were hellish, and if he had the option to leave for even a minute, he would take it just like that.

And so he and Yinsen worked on the dummy missile and the suit, hiding their movements and the gradually-assembled pieces of the suit from the cameras as best they could.

Tony still didn't trust Yinsen, made more excuses than before to stay near him even when they weren't working. Didn't want to be ratted out.

But then the main guy, the bald one, came in. And had a fit over Yinsen. Tony didn't speak anything besides English, Spanish, French, or Italian, but he picked things up fast.

And the big bad's tone made it pretty clear that he was displeased with Yinsen.

As did the way he ordered his goons to push Yinsen to his knees as the bald man heated something in Tony's fire.

The phrase coming out of Yinsen's mouth never changed, though, and Tony _knew_ that he couldn't just stand there and watch what was going to happen.

Ignoring the guns immediately pointed at him when he moved, he stepped forward and said the only thing he could think of that would save Yinsen, "I need him; good assistant."

It worked, and keeping the relief off his face was a struggle.

As they cleared out, Yinsen got to his feet, straightening his vest, and Tony began to wonder if maybe he'd planned wrong.

Maybe he should have planned for two suits.

They had been pretty prepared to burn Yinsen's tongue, and Tony had been around bullshitters enough to _know_ when they were bluffing. These guys hadn't been.

And Yinsen seemed like he had a strong moral code. He also didn't seem like the type to work for an organization that would so easily double-cross one of their operatives. And even with his family on the line, Yinsen still didn't seem like the type.

So Tony was regretting not trusting him earlier. The evidence had been there, _why_ hadn't he paid enough attention? Stupid.

But there wasn't enough palladium for another reactor, and the car battery he'd carelessly tossed into the corner of the cave when it became useless wasn't going to be enough.

But perhaps there was metal left over from the parts they were salvaging and reforging into his suit to make a vest or something else for Yinsen.

Spinning in a circle and taking quick mental inventory, he quickly came to the conclusion that there wasn't. He had to choke back a sob, going over to his cot and sitting down hard, tucking his head between his knees and rocking back and forth.

Yinsen gave him a sympathetic look but didn't come over; he had learned that Tony didn't want to be messed with when he was dealing with the worst of the cravings, and Tony was doing his damnedest to make this gut-deep despair look like one of those. Like his fingers were clenching uncontrollably and his stomach was churning and his head pounding.

After he'd grieved, he sat back up from where he'd flopped on his face and began to furiously review the escape plans he'd been drafting mentally.

He would have to go out first and leave Yinsen behind. Once all the terrorists were dead, he'd come back for Yinsen, get him out.

Take him home to his family.

And with that in mind, Tony rushed back over to the table to resume his work. They had less than 24 hours to finish up, after all.

* * *

Locked into his suit with no way out, Tony voluntarily clenched his hands into fists for the first time in weeks, focusing on the in-and-out flexing to keep himself from moving too soon and ruining what he and Yinsen had worked so hard for. He couldn't protect Yinsen, not like this, and the damn fool man had just rushed out of the room, completely disregarding Tony's carefully-laid plan, designed to protect Yinsen. Tony's friend.

But he couldn't remove the suit without assistance, and until the computer program finished uploading, he was stuck. Literally.

Finally, finally, it finished and he rushed from the room, trying to eliminate people as quickly as possible. It was one thing to train in a controlled environment, shooting non-living targets; something completely else to take aim and fire at a living, breathing human being.

But he had to put that aside, had to stick to the plan. _His_ plan, not Yinsen's.

After he'd been too quick, too careless, and gotten his arm caught in the wall, he found Yinsen, laying on a stack of bags, dying.

If only he'd listened to Tony, none of this would have happened. Tony would have gotten them out, and Yinsen wouldn't have bullet holes in his chest.

As Yinsen made his final confession, told Tony his family was already dead, that he'd lied, Tony couldn't feel anything except overwhelming sadness.

Until the burning anger and hatred kicked in, that was.

And then he gave the dead man a nod, flipped his face protector down, and left the cave.

As he faced down the assembled men, squinting in the bright sunlight and unleashing the flamethrowers, standing solid in the face of bullets, he was forced to admit that _maybe_ his plan would have needed to be changed, to deal with this...obstacle.

It wasn't until he was standing in an inferno of his own creation that he realized that his plan _probably_ wouldn't have worked at all.

And he didn't admit to himself that it _definitely _wouldn't have worked until he was prying metal off his body, prone in the hot sand after making his aerial escape.

Lying there in the desert, facing low odds of being able to get home alive, he cried. For himself and for Yinsen.

Then he got to his feet, determined, and started to walk.

* * *

As he stood strong under Obie's restraining arm and attempted to convey to the assembled press that _yes_, he was dead serious about Stark Industries' new direction, he could only hope that maybe Yinsen would have approved of this.

And once he'd had a strong drink (several, actually, having hardly been able to stop himself after four but knowing he ought to take it slow) and gotten some sleep in his own damn bed, he sat down with Pepper and properly looked Yinsen up, ignoring her attempts to direct his interest elsewhere. She was saying something about stock values...

Yinsen had been a medical doctor with an interest in engineering, and that was when Tony got an idea.

"Pepper? Can you set up a scholarship for me?"

Nonplussed, she didn't even look up from the stack of papers in front of her. "Of course, Mr. Stark. The Tony Stark what, exactly?"

"No, no, not me. Him," he flicked the file across the table to her.

She did look it up then, and read over it calmly, "Medicine, engineering, or both?"

"Medicine."

"I can do that," she said, already beginning to acquire the needed documentation.

"Thank you, Ms. Potts. That will be all for now."

And, left alone, he took another swig of his drink and closed his eyes, sighing deeply. He could never repay what Yinsen had done for him, but he could damn well try.


End file.
